July 26, 2008
Judge won’t stop state GOP from appointing delegates
By ANJEANETTE DAMON
adamon@rgj.com
A Washoe district judge rejected a lawsuit by a group of disaffected Republicans trying to get to the national convention, freeing the state party to appoint national delegates in a private conference call late Friday.
Saying internal party squabbles are better resolved by political parties than judges, Washoe District Judge Jerry Polaha refused to grant an injunction forcing the state party to recognize a slate of national delegates elected at an insurgent convention earlier this summer.
The decision means the Republican National Committee likely will be the arbiter between two competing slates of national delegates heading to St. Paul, Minn., in September.
“It is purely a political dispute,” Polaha said, siding with case law preventing courts from interfering with political party’s constitutional rights to decide their own rules and procedures.
After the judge’s decision, the state party’s executive committee voted on Friday to accept a slate of delegates selected by a volunteer nominating committee prior to the scuttled April 26 convention.
The party declined to release the list of names Friday, saying the delegates haven’t all been notified yet.
The delegates were chosen from a pool of party members who had submitted resumes to the committee well in advance. The committee selected the delegates based on past service to the party, prominent political recommendations and military service. Presidential preference was not a criteria, Washoe County Republican chairwoman Heidi Smith said.
“I never heard the names of a lot of people on the list,” she said. “I think we’ll have a lot of people who are new and who will be going to their first convention.”
Party leaders abruptly ended their state convention in April after a contingent of Ron Paul supporters forced a rules change that appeared to be leading to a slate of national delegates who wouldn’t back John McCain, the party’s presumptive nominee, at the national convention.
Other state delegates, frustrated because they didn’t know they had been required to submit a resume to be considered for the national convention, joined the Paul supporters in forcing the rules change to open the floor to nominations.
The party tried to reschedule the convention for Saturday but said they couldn’t generate enough interest from delegates to reach a mandated quorum to finish business.
In the meantime, the Paul supporters, led by Sparks dentist Wayne Terhune, held their own breakaway convention in June.
Although they also fell short of a quorum — only 320 delegates showed up — they elected national delegates and completed the convention.
By not recognizing the slate, Terhune’s lawyer, Matt Goodman, argued the party was “stripping away” the entire process set in state law for electing national delegates, which began with the precinct caucuses attended by 44,000 Republicans.
Paul, a Texas congressman with a libertarian bent, came in second in the Nevada caucuses in January. Although he has suspended his presidential campaign, he developed a devoted following of Republicans who remain intent on seeing the process through.
Terhune, who said he still holds out hope Paul will be able to capture the nomination, said his overall purpose was to “restore lawfulness to the Nevada state GOP.”
The party’s executive director Zachary Moyle, frustrated at the unprecedented breakdown in the party’s nominating process, said the party could have completed the convention if the breakaway delegates had agreed to participate Saturday.
“The preference has always been to reconvene the convention and give people the opportunity to do this,” he said. “That was the goal from day one.”
He denied it was a secretive process, saying eligible delegates were notified early that they had to submit a resume. Those chosen to go to St. Paul took the time to write why they should be selected, submitted photos and collected recommendations from prominent politicians, he said.
“Sixty percent of the delegates are first-time delegates,” said. “Some of the applications really moved the nominating committee.”
Moyle acknowledged that the list approved by the executive committee Friday was somewhat different from the list originally put forward at the April 26 convention, saying some people decided they no longer wanted to attend.
